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Hi, my name is Lindsay and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Thursday Morning.
Financial anxiety can feel overwhelming, affecting everything from our daily mood to our future plans.
Today, I'll share mindfulness strategies to help you understand and interrupt negative financial thought patterns so you can feel more in control.
Let's jump in. So financial anxiety can happen to literally anyone, even for the person who seemingly has it all together financially.
They make good money, they have a hearty savings account, they have money set aside for retirement, but they are still stressed out when they go out to eat and cannot bring themselves to order an iced tea instead of the water that comes for free.
Why do they feel so worried?
I think a lot of us tend to judge that person or if that's us, we tend to judge ourselves for that behavior.
But as a financial therapist, I'd like to invite you to think about how that particular type of anxiety is keeping you safe.
So oftentimes when I meet somebody who is very anxious about spending money, oftentimes I'm asking them to go back and time to think about why that type of behavior of holding on tightly to money kept them safe.
So, for example, they might have said, well, in my first job right out of high school, I was struggling a lot financially.
I got into a lot of credit card debt.
It was so upsetting and stressful.
And I finally managed to pay it off.
But I'm so worried that I'll end up there again.
So now these are the things that I do.
I'm very strict about tracking every single penny.
money. The other thing that I hear come up all the time is that this is a learned behavior.
Their parent or grandparent exhibited holding on tightly to money in order to stay safe, and they adopted that behavior.
And what we know about epigenetics is that trauma can be passed down for up to seven generations.
Having money meant I can flee this country if it is no longer safe for me or having money meant that I could put a deposit down on an apartment and have somewhere for my kids to live.
So I'd been working with somebody in my practice who was very financially successful by all measures.
And they were so fearful that somehow they would make a mistake and it would all be gone that they literally would not allow themselves to even go go to a park and play a free game of volleyball because they were so stressed about having to buy potentially new shoes because their shoes might be damaged by the sand in that beach volleyball.
I didn't just say to them, let's look at how much money you have in your bank account.
See, here's the data.
You can go buy those shoes.
No, instead we really teased out what it would feel like to join their friends down at the park and what benefits they would get out of having that type of regular community meetup.
This was a volleyball group that met on Tuesdays and Thursdays and how it might help them to feel safer and more connected.
And so what allowed them to move from, yes, logically, I know I have enough money, but it's hard for me to spend it, was naming, I am not only safe enough financially, but I also want community and connectedness and movement and I want to be outside in nature.
And really connecting themselves to the deeper why helped them to move through that financial anxiety, not just the black and white, the data, the numbers, the spreadsheets.
So if you experience financial anxiety, the very first step, just like mindfulness teaches us, is to notice, to notice when you're experiencing that anxiety and to notice what thoughts also come up with it.
Instead of jumping to judgment, what's wrong with me?
Why can't I do this?
How come this is so hard?
I want you to get curious and compassionate and just check in with when this is happening.
Taking that additional beat, that additional pause can help you to extend that compassionate curiosity and to move from what's wrong with me to I'm feeling stressed, I'm feeling worried, or I'm feeling overextended and thinking through what might be some other responses that would help you to feel better, to feel safer, to feel more present outside of that particular type of financial worry.
Another option when you're working through financial anxiety is to start pairing financial moments with other positive or neutral things in your life.
If you're always checking your bank account at the end of the week when you're stressed and you're on E, maybe give yourself permission to peek at your bank account at the beginning of the week and make it a little routine.
Get your coffee ready, get your morning pastry ready, and start to help your brain and your body to associate taking financial action with other positive things that are already happening in your life.
So stacking money habits on top of other positive things, neutral things, or mindfulness activities can help you to rewire that relationship with money from anxious to neutral and hopefully someday maybe even positive.
That's it for today.
Tomorrow we'll wrap up the week by learning how to navigate and respond to negative financial news without feeling overwhelmed.
I'll see you back here really soon.
© transcript Emily Beynon
